Double Good, Double Pleasure

Tom Thumb

By Henry Fielding

The Great Catherine

By George Bernard Shaw

Directed by Jenny-Lyn Bader and Elliot Thomson

At the Lowell House JCR

Tonight and tomorrow night at 8:00

Harvard theater has a way of bringing out the foolishness in us all. In the Lowell Society's twin productions of The Great Catherine and Tom Thumb the Great, silliness is the name of the game. Queens wear metallic platform shoes, cats purr to the tunes of Andrew Lloyd Weber and footnotes come to life.

One realizes that something is different about this production immediately upon walking into the theater space. The first play, Bernard Shaw's The Great Catherine, suposedly takes place in 1776 St. Petersburg. However, surveying the neo-60's psychedelic murals that surround the stage one could have easily mistake the set for a Bangles sound-stage. For obvious reasons, the wall-size mural of a wizarded-out Mickey Mouse on a flying broom simply does not cut it as a Russian landscape.

Where Mickey fails to draw us into the world of Russian court affairs, Adam Schwartz, as a vodka-guzzling, bearish Patiomkin duly succeeds. Schwartz is most endearing as the sotted-out relation to the Great Catherine. Everyone is "a darkbg" in Patiomkn's eyes, and Shwartz plays the part to the hilt, lavishing his fellow character with Leo Buscaglian hugs and kisses. When the English Captain Edstaston (Orion Ross) arrives on the scene to arrange an audience with the Great Catherine, Patiomkin dutifully obliges, throwing the Englishman on his back and literally dropping him off at the Empress's private suite.

As the icy, German-born Empress, Elizabeth Humphrey appears to be thoroughly amused by and admittedly attracted to Edstaston, who turns out to be a prime specimen of the English booby. The attraction is clearly one way, however. Edstaston finds the Russians utterly abhorrent and uncivilized.

In her performance as the Russian leader, Humphrey gives one of the most effective performances of the evening, in that the hard edge she gives to Catherine's character demands the audience's attention. And as the supercilious and snooty Edstaston, Ross comfortably slides into Shaw's caricature of the insufferable Englishman.

From the social criticism of Shaw, the evening progresses, or rather regresses into utter lunacy that characterizes Henry Fielding's Tom Thumb the Great. While Shaw's play has a tendency to moralize against the so-called "liberal" rule of the Russian empress, Fielding's play serves to showcase the comedic talents of the cast.

One of the terrific things about this double bill is that most of the actors in the first play return for the second. Orion Ross sheds the stuffy English character to stand out as the cutie pie-Casanova who bunny hops his way around the stage, causing Princess Huncamunca (Jennifer Gibbs) to lustily gnaw away at her sheets. Also in pursuit of the tiny Tom is the Amazonian Queen Glumulca (Margaret Meserve), who effectively vents out her sexual trustrations by devouring whole cabbage heads and stomping around the kingdom in her funky metallicized platform shoes.

As one might imagine, there are plenty of funny scenes in this play. One of the more hysterical ones is the musical number led by Merlin (Richard Claflin), who is the father of Thumb. Claflin leads the audience in a rowdy rendition of "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" while simultaneously leading the cast in a chorus kick-line. Equally ridiculous is the light saber battle scene between Thumb and rival Lord Grizzle (Carl Bj Fox). Also garnering a high reading on the laughmeter is the cameo appearance of the ghost of Gaffer Thumb (Eric Olsen), who surfaces via the magic of video.

Because this Lowell House performance includes two dramas, the program tends to be long. But despite the three-hour duration, the double bill of The Great Catherine and Tom Thumb the Great is a prime example of the greatness that can be achieved when the right creative channels of Harvard theater are tapped.